Scarlett Johansson "shocked" and "angered" over voice controversy
Scarlett Johansson has responded to OpenAI launching a chatbot with an "eerily similar" voice to her own.
The AI voice controversy started earlier this month when the company debuted a chatbot voice named Sky that some were quick to compare to Johansson's role in the 2013 movie Her.
Spike Jonze's romantic comedy-drama follows Joaquin Phoenix's character Theodore falling for his virtual assistant Samantha, voiced by Johansson.
While OpenAI removed the Sky voice and insisted it wasn't meant as an imitation of Johansson, the Marvel star accused the company and its founder, Sam Altman, of copying the way she sounds.
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"When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine," Johansson wrote in a statement (via BBC News).
"Mr Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word 'her' – a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human."
Johansson said she was initially approached by OpenAI to lend her voice to the new chatbot, but declined.
"[Altman] told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI," she said.
"He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people."
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Johansson said she had to hire lawyers and instructed them to send two letters to OpenAI, in order to investigate whether the Sky voice has been modelled after hers.
"In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity," Johansson added.
For his part, Altman maintains that Sky was never meant to imitate the Oscar-nominated star and that a voice actor was cast before reaching out to Johansson.
"The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never intended to resemble hers," he wrote.
"We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms Johansson. Out of respect for Ms Johansson, we have paused using Sky's voice in our products.
"We are sorry to Ms Johansson that we didn't communicate better."
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